ENGL203: Cultural and Literary Expression in the 18th and 19th Centuries

Unit 1: The Enlightenment and Restoration LiteratureWith the Restoration of the crown in 1660, a new era in English
literature and politics began. While the Glorious Revolution of 1688 -
1689 firmly established Parliament’s superiority over the monarchy,
writers responded to the end of Puritan rule by addressing previously
proscribed materials - especially sexuality - often in increasingly
secular terms. At the same time, the philosophical and scientific
foundation of the Enlightenment­ - most notably the chartering of the
Royal Society in 1662 and the writings of John Locke at the end of the
century - appeared. During the century that followed, Enlightenment
thinkers like Voltaire believed that one could use reason and rational
thought to combat the forces of ignorance, tyranny, and repression that
had come to be associated with the church and the absolutist monarchic
government.

In this unit, you will study the development of neoclassical
aesthetics and the renewal of the theater in the Restoration period
before exploring the development of Enlightenment philosophy and its
relationship to key literary developments of the first half of the
18th century from political satire to Alexander Pope’s famous
mock-epic, The Rape of the Lock.

Unit 1 Time Advisory
Completing this unit should take you approximately 32 hours.

☐ Subunit 1.1: 12.75 hours

☐ Subunit 1.1.1: 2.5 hours

☐ Subunit 1.1.2: 3.5 hours

☐ Subunit 1.1.3: 6.75 hours

☐ Subunit 1.2: 5 hours

☐ Subunit 1.2.1: 2.5 hours

☐ Subunit 1.2.2: 2 hours

☐ Subunit 1.2.3: 0.5 hours

☐ Subunit 1.3: 14.25 hours

☐ Subunit 1.3.1: 2.75 hours

☐ Subunit 1.3.2: 4.5 hours

☐ Subunit 1.3.3: 1.5 hours

☐ Subunit 1.3.4: 5.5 hours

Unit1 Learning Outcomes
Upon successful completion of this unit, you will be able to:
- trace the historical origins of the Enlightenment;
- outline the major trends of philosophical thought in the
Enlightenment period;
- define and apply the terms mock epic, satire, and heroic
couplet;
- identify the key components of neoclassicism with reference to
exemplary poetic works;
- describe how the elevated language functions in Pope’s The Rape of
the Lock;
- explain the treatment of the upper classes in Congreve’s The Way of
the World; and
- explain the importance of reappearing classical motifs in
Restoration literature.

1.1 Restoration Literature1.1.1 The Restoration, the Glorious Revolution, and the Emergence of
Parliamentary Democracy
- Reading: The Saylor Foundation’s: “The Restoration and the
Eighteenth Century”
Link: The Saylor Foundation’s: “The Restoration and the Eighteenth
Century” (PDF)

Instructions: Read this text as a short introduction to the
Restoration literary period.
Reading this section should take approximately 30 minutes.

Instructions: Watch the two lectures from a course on early Modern
England. Pay particular attention to Professor Wrightson’s account
of the political and social changes that marked the late
17th and early 18th centuries in England.

Watching these video lectures and pausing to take notes should take
approximately 2 hours.

1.1.2 John Dryden and the Emergence of English Neoclassicism
- Reading: The Victorian Web: “Neoclassicism: An Introduction”
Link: The Victorian Web: “Neoclassicism: An
Introduction” (HTML)

Instructions: Read this article for an introduction to
Neoclassicism. Pay particular attention to the account of
Neoclassicism’s main historical divisions and its leading tenets.
Reading this article should take approximately 15 minutes.
Terms of Use: Please respect the copyright and terms of use
displayed on the webpage above.

Reading: The Cambridge History of English and American
Literature: A.W. Ward’s “Chapter I: Dryden”
Link: The Cambridge History of English and American Literature:
A.W. Ward’s “Chapter I:
Dryden” (HTML)

Instructions: As a further introduction to Dryden, read the
following sections of A.W. Ward’s chapter on Dryden from the classic
Cambridge History, published at the beginning of the
20th century: 1, 2, 5, 19, 23, and 34 - 37. While our
critical perspectives have changed significantly since the
Cambridge History’s publication, it still remains an important
resource for basic information on literary history.

Instructions: Read the excerpts from Dryden’s Annus Mirabilis.
Dryden was named poet laureate in 1668, and by post accounts, he was
seen as the most important English poet and critic of the late
17th century. His various critical writingshelped to
establish an English version of neoclassical poetics, a poetics on
display in his poetry, as the leading theory of the age.

In the selection from Annus Mirabilis, Dryden celebrates the
rebuilding of London after the great fire of 1666, forecasting its
renewal and future greatness. Pay attention to the poem’s thematic
content - e.g., its references to trade and empire in its vision of
London’s future; its form; its highly regular rhythm and rhyme; its
controlled and classical allusions; and its figurative language.

Instructions: Read Dryden’s poems, “Mac Flecknoe” and “Alexander’s
Feast.” In “Mac Flecknoe,” Dryden produces one of the most famous
mock-heroic satires of the era. As with other mock-heroic pieces,
Dryden uses the heightened language of an epic to satirize his
target, the poet Thomas Shadwell. “Alexander’s Feast” takes an
episode from Alexander the Great’s history to meditate upon the
power of music to move people’s emotions.

Instructions: Read this essay, which contains explications of “Mac
Flecknoe” and “Alexander's Feast.” As you read, refer back to the
poems as you work through the analyses.

Reading this essay and referring back to the poems should take
approximately 30 minutes.

1.1.3 Comedies of Manners
- Reading: William Congreve’s *The Way of the World*
Link: William Congreve’s The Way of the
World (PDF)

*A*lso available in:
[Google
Books](http://books.google.com/books?id=8g2PfBd210sC&printsec=frontcover&dq=william+congreve+way+of+the+world&hl=en&ei=ZWIzTIrYNMGblgeejL2_Cw&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1&ved=0CCgQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q&f=false)
iBooks (free)
[Kindle](http://www.amazon.com/Way-World-ebook/dp/B000FC1FL6) ($2.79)
Instructions: Read *The Way of the World* for an example of
18<sup>th</sup> century Restoration comedy. William Congreve’s witty
comedy-of-manners play features a startlingly complex plot and
memorable, epigrammatic dialogue as it explores the related issues
of love, power, and money. Pay attention to its frank depiction of
sexuality and its emphasis on the power dynamics of social life.
Reading this play should take approximately 4 hours.
Terms of Use: This work is in the public domain.

Instructions: Read “Chapter V: The Restoration Drama I” and
“Chapter VI: Restoration Drama II.” These two chapters provide
information about the development of 18th-century
theater, which emerged out of the Restoration political context, as
well as a thorough background on Restoration comedy.

Instructions: Complete the discussion questions relating to this
subunit, and post your responses to the ENGL203 discussion
forum. Review and
respond to one or two other students’ posts. After you answer the
discussion questions, or if you need guidance while answering the
questions, check The Saylor Foundation’s “Guide to
Responding”
(PDF).

Completing this activity should take approximately 30 minutes.

1.2 The Age of Enlightenment1.2.1 What Is Enlightenment?
- Reading: The Open University: “The Enlightenment”
Link: The Open University: “The
Enlightenment”
(HTML)

Instructions: Read the brief introduction on the Enlightenment.
Then, read the following three chapters: “Chapter 1: The
Enlightenment,” “Chapter 2: The Enlightenment and Its Mission,” and
“Chapter 3: Enlightenment, Science, and Empiricism.” As you read
these chapters, complete the four exercises interspersed within
them.
Reading these chapters and completing the exercises should take
approximately 1 hour and 30 minutes.
Terms of Use: Please respect the copyright and terms of use
displayed on the webpage above.

Instructions: Read Kant’s “What Is Enlightenment?” This piece comes
from the end of the 18th century. Kant provides one of
the most famous definitions of Enlightenment.

Kant’s essay offers a counter-intuitive account of individual
reason and its public use in terms of religious beliefs, defining
public use in terms we might more readily see as private - the “use
which a person makes of it as a scholar” - as opposed to its private
use - “in a particular civil post or office” - which, according to
Kant, may be restricted.

Public reason, on the other hand, should be allowed full freedom,
especially the realm of religion. This faith in reason culminates in
Kant’s answer that the present is not an enlightened age, but it is
an age of enlightenment, as many of the restrictions and limitations
on the use of reason have been removed so that humankind may move
beyond its “self-imposed tutelage.”

Reading this essay should take approximately 30 minutes.

Terms of Use: The material above was provided by the Internet
Modern History
Sourcebook. Permission
has been granted for electronic copying and distribution in print
form for educational purposes and personal use but not commercial
use. You can find the original
version here.

Instructions: Read these excerpts from Condorcet’s The Future
Progress of the Human Mind. This piece comes from the end of the
18th century. Condorcet offers a model of Enlightenment
optimism’s faith in the human capacity to continue to approach
perfection through the use of reason. Condorcet carries this faith
in reason even further, prophesying the ever-increasing capacity of
humankind to understand and dominate the world around him,
epitomizing the Enlightenment as a whole.

Reading these excerpts should take approximately 30 minutes.

Terms of Use: The material above was provided by the Internet
Modern History
Sourcebook. Permission
has been granted for electronic copying and distribution in print
form for educational purposes and personal use but not commercial
use. You can find the original
version here.

Instructions: Read this study guide for an overview of the
Enlightenment.
Reading this study guide should take approximately 30 minutes.
Terms of Use: Please respect the copyright and terms of use
displayed on the webpage above.

Instructions: Read the selections from Locke’s An Essay Concerning
Human Understanding,and then read Chapters 1 - 3 of Locke’s Second
Treatise of Government. When reading these excerpts from Locke,
keep in mind Brians’s overview as well as the information on the
Enlightenment from Subunit 1.2.1.

In Locke’s An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, he offers one
of the most famous accounts of his empiricist epistemology: the idea
that all knowledge derives from experience, the starting position
for much Enlightenment thought. In particular, he describes the mind
as a tabula rasa, as a blank slate, upon which experience inscribes
itself, creating knowledge. This emphasis on the experiential nature
of knowledge served to reinforce developing defenses of scientific
knowledge and to provide a foundation for the Enlightenment’s
project of questioning all pre-established claims to knowledge. At
the same time, this emphasis on the individual’s sensual experience
of the world as the basis of knowledge came to frame critiques of
the Enlightenment project from within and without, including
Romanticism’s subjectivism.

In Second Treatise (1689), John Locke articulates his theories of
natural law and natural right, arguing that government is natural
and necessary, as long as it maintains popular consent. Locke’s
ideas have been seen as defending the Glorious Revolution and as
providing the theoretical groundwork for the revolutions of the late
18th century with their emphasis on individual liberty
and on government deriving its powers from the people.

Reading these selections should take approximately 1 hour.

Terms of Use: Locke’s An Essay Concerning Human Understanding and
Second Treatise of Government are both in the public domain.

Instructions: Read this essay for an overview of the development of
science in the 17<sup>th</sup> and 18<sup>th</sup> centuries, which
discusses the origins of the Enlightenment and the emergence of
philosophers like Francis Bacon and Descartes.
Reading this essay should take approximately 15 minutes.

Instructions: Complete the discussion questions relating to the
Enlightenment, and post your responses to the ENGL203 discussion
forum. Review and
respond to other students’ posts. After you answer the discussion
questions, or if you need guidance while answering the questions,
check The Saylor Foundation’s “Guide to
Responding”
(PDF).

Completing this activity should take approximately 30 minutes.

1.3 18th-Century Literature and the Development of the
Public Sphere
- Lecture: YouTube: Yale University: John Merriman’s “The
Enlightenment and the Public Sphere”
Link: YouTube: Yale University: John Merriman’s “The Enlightenment
and the Public
Sphere” (YouTube)

Instructions: Watch this video lecture to learn about the
Enlightenment and the public sphere.

Watching this video lecture and taking notes should take
approximately 1 hour.
Terms of Use: Please respect the copyright and terms of use
displayed on the webpage above.

Also available in:
[Google
Books](http://books.google.com/books?id=5YM6AAAAMAAJ&pg=PR9&dq=addison+spectator+vol+1&hl=en&ei=G1gzTJHZBYXGlQejj_W9Cw&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1&ved=0CCgQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q&f=false)
Instructions: Read entry “No. 1” from *Spectator*, an
18<sup>th</sup>-century periodical intended to promote Enlightenment
thought by circulating ideas that could be read by the masses.
Reading this entry should take approximately 30 minutes.
Terms of Use: This work is in the public domain.

Reading: The Cambridge History of English and American
Literature: Harold Routh’s “Chapter II: Steele and Addison”
Link: The Cambridge History of English and American Literature:
Harold Routh’s “Chapter II: Steele and
Addison” (HTML)

Instructions: Read the following sections to learn about the
background and significance of Addison and Steele’s Spectator: 1,
4 - 6, 8, 16 - 21, and 24.

Reading these sections should take approximately 1 hour.

Terms of Use: This work is in the public domain.

Reading: Fordham University’s Internet Modern History
Sourcebook: “The First English Coffee Houses”
Link: Fordham University’s Internet Modern History
Sourcebook: “The First English
Coffee-Houses”
(PDF)

Instructions: Read the selection on coffee-house culture and the
development of a modern public sphere in early
18th-century London. This text provides a background on
the social atmosphere of the time.

Reading this selection should take approximately 15 minutes.

Terms of Use: The reading above is available for viewing in the
public domain.

Instructions: Read the brief biography on Alexander Pope and the
related essays on the mock epic, satire, and the heroic couplet*.*
These essays help to supply the literary context for understanding
Pope’s contributions to these forms.
Reading these texts should take approximately 1 hour.
Terms of Use: Please respect the copyright and terms of use
displayed on the webpages above.

Instructions: Read the Rape of the Lock. Read the first two
epistles of Pope’s “Essay on Man” and Part 1 of his “Essay on
Criticism.”

Alexander Pope was generally considered the greatest English poet
of the 18th century, and he achieved great fame and
influence (and was the target of much criticism) during his
lifetime. He was best known for his neoclassical verse, his
extensive use of the heroic couplet - two rhymed lines of iambic
pentameter - his satiric wit, and his poetic essays, which espouse
both neoclassical theory and Enlightenment ideals.

In his famous mock-epic, The Rape of the Lock, Alexander Pope
satirizes a frivolous quarrel between two wealthy families, poking
fun but also astounding readers with his metrical finesse and
creativity. In his “Essay on Criticism,” for example, he puts
forward the neoclassical idea that the rules of art discovered by
classical writers are true, for they are true to nature: “Those
rules of old discover’d, not devis’d,/ Are Nature still, but Nature
methodis’d; / Nature, like liberty, is but restrain’d / By the same
laws which first herself ordain’d.” Poetry should be true to nature,
of course, but the great poets of the past have already “discover’d,
not devis’d” laws in keeping with nature, laws they have
“methodis’d” so that we can better follow nature. At the beginning
of the second epistle of his “Essay on Man,” Pope offers one of the
quintessential statements of the Enlightenment’s focus on this world
and on discovering and manipulating the way it works: “Know, then,
thyself, presume God not to scan;/ The proper study of mankind is
man.” Instead of focusing on metaphysical questions or emphasizing
humankind’s relationship to God, Pope contends that it is mankind’s
place to study oneself and the world we inhabit. The 18th
century would come to be characterized as the Enlightenment for this
very emphasis of the use of reason to dispel previously accepted
ideas and problems based in religion and tradition.

Reading these excerpts from Pope’s works should take approximately
2 hours.

Instructions: Locate the lecture titled “Week 13 Understanding
Pope’s Heroic Couplet,” and select “View in iTunes” to access the
lecture. Listen to Dr. Carsley’s lecture and study the lecture
slides to gain a greater understanding of Pope’s use of the heroic
couplet.

Listening, taking notes, and studying the lecture slides should
take approximately 30 minutes.

Terms of Use: Please respect the copyright and terms of use
displayed on the webpage above.

Instructions: Complete the discussion questions relating to this
subunit, and post your responses to the ENGL203 discussion
forum. Review and
respond to at least one or two other students’ posts. After you
answer the discussion questions, or if you need guidance while
answering the questions, check The Saylor Foundation’s “Guide to
Responding”
(PDF).

Instructions: Read Professor Cody’s short biography of Swift and
his introduction to Swift’s famous satirical essay. In reading these
materials, you may want to review the essays on satire from the
previous unit.

Reading these essays will take approximately 30 minutes.

Terms of Use: Please respect the copyright and terms of use
displayed on the webpage above.

Instructions: Locate the lecture titled “Week 12 Swift, Satire, and
the Enlightenment,” and select “View in iTunes” to access the
lecture. Listen to Dr. Carsley’s lecture and study the lecture
slides to learn about satire in the Enlightenment with a focus on
Swift’s work.

Listening, taking notes, and studying the lecture slides should
take approximately 30 minutes.

Terms of Use: Please respect the copyright and terms of use
displayed on the webpage above.

Instructions: Samuel Johnson was one of the most prominent literary
figures of late 18<sup>th</sup>-century England. Best known now for
his *Dictionary of the English Language*, Johnson continued the
neoclassicism of the earlier part of the century. Read the
introduction to Johnson and the brief biography. Then, read the
introductions to “The Vanity of Human Wishes” and *The History of
Rasselas.*
Reading the biography and introductions should take approximately
30 minutes.
Terms of Use: Please respect the copyright and terms of use
displayed on the webpage above.

Instructions: Read the preface to A Dictionary of the English
Language, edited by Jack Lynch. Then, read Johnson’s prose fable.
When reading these materials, please make use of the introductions
to these resources in this subunit to inform your reading.

Instructions: Complete this assessment in which you will write a
short essay of approximately 500 - 800 words, after selecting one of
the offered prompts. After you complete your short essay, or if you
need guidance while answering the questions, check The Saylor
Foundation’s [“Guide to
Responding”](https://resources.saylor.org/wwwresources/archived/site/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/ENGL203-Guide-to-Responding-to-Assessments.pdf)
(PDF).
Tips and Suggestions: If you have an ePortfolio account, then it
may be beneficial to upload or link to your essay from the Work
Samples section of your profile. In combination with the Study
Groups function or the ENGL201 discussion forum, using your
ePortfolio profile may be a good way to receive peer feedback on
your written work. If you do not yet have an ePortfolio account, you
can create one [here](http://eportfolio.saylor.org/), free of
charge.
Completing this assessment should take approximately 1 hour and 30
minutes.